Fineline

Fineline is a play that reads between the lines of history to explore dreams of change. 

The play starts in a restaurant on present-day Vergelegen.  Waitresses introducing the specials of the day get carried away into telling the story of the historical figures, after whom the dishes are named. They take us back to the early 1700’s in the Cape Colony where a slave woman, Suraya, meets Adam Tas – leader of the ‘free burgher’s rebellion’. Fineline is a story of impossible love and a fight for freedom.

In Fineline, the Waitresses are played by actresses while the historical characters are large puppets. Freed from the constraints of the human body, the puppet characters move expressively. These sewn, stuffed figures remind the audience that the story and the characters, as well as their own views of them, are but constructs based on a skeleton of ‘truth’.